Yes they are annuals. Like fieldofflowers said they drop their seed quite readily and they are very cold tolerant. It takes a hard frost to kill them. Calendula is a very old cultivar. It used to be grown as a herb. Some people still grow it that way. A healing salve for cuts, scrapes, and minor burns can be made from its flowers. The tallest one is called Beauty or pacific Beauty. It is about 18 inches tall. The smallest one is Bon Bon and it is about 12 inches tall These come in mixed colors from cream to orange and yellow and every shade between those colors. There are also some newer hybrids that have been introduced--veseys has a new Apricot one, but I don't know how they behave in the garden because I've never grown them. I tend to let them seed in one spot and then transplant the seedlings to bare spots in the garden later. I keep the rest deadheaded or get the seed off of them before it can fall so I'm digging out a lot of plants come spring because I think every dropped seed grows. If you are planting them new, you can plant them outside when the daffodils break through the ground or just in very early spring.

Those are just beautiful dahlias! I looked at your trade list. I have moulin rouge and Jolly Bee geraniums for trade. I also could send you a box of organically grown meyer lemons in exchange for any dahlias, if you're interested. My email is balletstef@att.net. I haven't been able to get my email address changed on my Gardenweb page. It keeps reverting to the old address, which I no longer have. Sorry. Hope to hear from you! Stephenie

Tiffy, that pic doesn't really do the cosmos diablo color justice. This pic was taken a few weeks ago with the sun shinning directly behind it. I wasn't intending to get the pic with light at this angle, just some pics, but this is what I got. A lot of times the cosmos diablo will have more of the lighter orange on it when it first blooms, then darken a few days later. This one is from last year just after it started to bloom I love both the cosmos diablo and sunset. The bloom early in the summer, by July 4th at the latest for me, and keep blooming till the frost gets them. My original seeds came from my grandparents farm just before they sold it, almost 40 years ago, and I've been growing them myself every year since. First in pots on an apartment balcony and finally 30 years ago, in my own beds at my home. They only grow 1--2 feet so they fit in the beds in a variety of locations and if you want to really keep them short, you can prune the plants to stay very short and they will still bloom beautifully. I will have tons and tons of seeds of both the diablo and sunset for trades and BEAP offers in a few weeks. Just getting things all together now. NORTHENER, the dahlia diablo, fireworks, and collarette dandy are dwarf dahlias that are easy to start from seed and bloom the first year. Lots of people just sow them as annuals and toss the entire plant out at the end of the season. the seed packets came in mixed colors, so what I have been growing where just the colors that I got from the seeds I originally WS. I've saved the tubers for the past 2 years because I liked the specific colors and combos of colors that bloomed and wanted to be sure that I had them the next year. I wasn't sure that the seeds would come true to the parent plant because they are open pollinated and I have a lot of the dwarf dahlias. As far as I know, the seeds that I collected last year and the year before did come true to the parent plant, at least for the friends that WS seeds that I collected from them, here in my town and a few towns away. The collarette dandy are new seeds that I WS this year and they where from mixed color seeds. I only sowed 2 seeds and wouldn't you know that both of them bloomed in the same colors but with different color combos, so they do look different. I should have seeds from them, including collarette dandy, diablo, fireworks and stargazer. NAN, My chinese forget me nots where WS in March and up within 3 weeks. I planted them in hunks with a lot of hunks together in big holes because they look so much better when they are clumped together. Yes they have bloomed all summer for me, even when I didn't dead head or collect seeds from them until now. They started blooming around the end of June and are still going strong. They are a real work horse in the garden, blooming even under the worst of conditions. They where some of the only things blooming in my beds last summer, when we had real cool temps and rain for 2 solid months in June, July and into part of August. This summer, they have been blooming without skipping a beat, with horrible heat and humidity, most of June, all of July and August and even into the first week of Sept. Add to the fact that we had no rain to speak of for 2 months, more than 7 inches below normal and I can only water every other day. They still chugged along, blooming their hearts out. Just not a plant I would every be without. Fran

Your tubers, as they are called, sound like they are way too dried out. Usually it just takes a few hours or overnight to get them dry to the touch and ready for storing. You could try to rehydrate them a bit in a soak of water, then let the skins dry and store in any number of ways above freezing and below 50 preferably. It won't hurt to try to save them, but they sound pretty far gone. There is no way to rehydrate them to their former fleshy selves. But if you get them to sprout next Spring, you should see your plants once again. Good luck!